QuoteLog

“He told me to picture a world without art — to imagine a life with no music in it, no hot colors, no nonsense, no poetry. He told me to picture a world in which no one was ever shaken, nothing was said that ever challenged anyone, nothing was done that ever disturbed or uplifted a human soul. And that, he told me, is what it means to miss New Orleans.”

“Chaos can be a positive thing. Chaos is inherently part of the creative act. To embrace creativity means you must also embrace chaos. Things don’t happen when everything is neat and ‘just so’. Creativity is all about disruption. The people who tell you that creativity is pain-free are liars. The people who tell you they’ve got a plan are liars. There is no plan. There’s just you, God and the need to invent.”

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”

“I’m in a bad place, nor am I a painter.”

“The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses -- behind the lines, in the gym and out there on the road -- long before I dance under those lights.”

“Basic research is what I am doing when I don’t know what I am doing.”

“When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere.”

“Christmas! The very word brings joy to our hearts. No matter how we may dread the rush, the long Christmas lists for gifts and cards to be bought and given--when Christmas Day comes there is still the same warm feeling we had as children, the same warmth that enfolds our hearts and our homes.”

“Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.”

“Doing creative work is like running a marathon, you’ve got to do it really regularly.”

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”

“You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.”

“Light is life.”

“The really good idea is always traceable back quite a long way, often to a not very good idea which sparked off another idea that was only slightly better, which somebody else misunderstood in such a way that they then said something which was really rather interesting.”

“You’re never too old to do goofy stuff.”

“I do this because the need to create is woven into the fabric of who I am. I have expressed myself artistically in some form or another since I was five. Today, with computers and digital technology available, I feel like a kid with their first box of crayons and a freshly painted wall. The combinations of what I can create seem endless.”

“The first prerogative of an artist in any medium is to make a fool of himself.”

“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.”

“Simplicity for its own sake is not a design solution.”

“The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it - so fine that we often are on the line and do not know it.”

“What could be more interesting, or in the end, more ecstatic, than in those rare moments when you see another person look at something you’ve made, and realize that they got it exactly, that your heart jumped to their heart with nothing in between.”

“You’re never too old to create refrigerator art.”

“Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient unto themselves. For all external sources of happiness and pleasure are, by their very nature, highly uncertain, precarious, ephemeral and subject to chance.”

“People need trouble -- a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it. Artists do; I don’t mean you need to live in a rat hole or gutter, but you have to learn fortitude, endurance. Only vegetables are happy.”

“The mind of the people is like mud, from which arise strange and beautiful things.”

“One may have a blazing hearth in one’s soul and yet no one ever comes to sit by it. Passersby see only a whisp of smoke rising from the chimney and continue on their way.”

“Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.”

“It’s just seeing - at least the photography I care about. You either see, or you don’t see. The rest is academic. Anyone can learn how to develop. It’s how you organize what you see into a picture.”

“And with one click of the mouse I was gently nudged from my surly groove. I was inspired.”

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”

“The creative person finds himself in a state of turmoil, restlessness, emptiness, and unbearable frustration unless he expresses his inner life in some creative way.”

“Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint on it you can.”

“Be a genius, not a stomper of ants.”

“If you’re trying to be popular, you will probably fail, and you will never be satisfied with the success you do manage to achieve. If you simply do work that pleases you, there’s a good chance somebody else will like it, too.”

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”

“You’ve got to keep the child alive; you can’t create without it.”

“A creative block is the wall we erect to ward off the anxiety we suppose we’ll experience if we sit down to work.”

“A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.”

“If you hear a voice within you saying, ‘You are not a painter’, then by all means paint, boy, and that voice will be silenced.”

“I do not know myself how I paint it. I sit down with a white board before the spot that strikes me. I look at what is before my eyes, and say to myself, that white board must become something.”

“Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed.”

“I take photographs with love, so I try to make them art objects. But I make them for myself first and foremost - that is important. If they are art objects at the same time, that’s fine with me.”

“Artists are the people among us who realize creation didn’t stop on the sixth day.”

“Be a good craftsman; it won’t stop you being a genius.”

“You should often amuse yourself when you take a walk for recreation, in watching and taking note of the attitudes and actions of men as they talk and dispute, or laugh or come to blows with one another… noting these down with rapid strokes, in a little pocket-book which you ought always to carry with you.”

“He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much; who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men, and the love of small children; who has filled his niche, and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who has never lacked appreciation of earth’s beauty , or failed to express it; who has always looked for the best in others, and given them the best he had; whose life was an inspiration; whose memory a benediction.”

“Disappointment, when it involves neither shame nor loss, is as good as success; for it supplies as many images to the mind, and as many topics to the tongue.”

“I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don’t need.”

“We are most nearly ourselves when we achieve the seriousness of the child at play.”

“Your photography is a record of your living - for anyone who really sees. You may see and be affected by other people’s ways, you may even use them to find your own, but you will have eventually to free yourself of them. That is what Nietzche meant when he said, ‘I have just read Schopenhauer, now I have to get rid of him.’ He knew how insidious other people’s ways could be, particularly those which have the forcefulness of profound experience, if you let them get between you and your own personal vision.”

“Have no fear of perfection - you’ll never reach it.”